The other day, in a spring-training game against the Braves, Miguel Gonzalez was basically pitching for his rotation slot. That might’ve been surprising enough, given how much Gonzalez has meant to the Orioles in the past, but he did have a rough 2015 and a rougher month of March. Anyhow, Gonzalez went five innings, allowing a run with no walks and four strikeouts. The results were solid, even if they could’ve been worse. Yet Gonzalez still got released. Something just wasn’t good enough, and the Orioles decided to go with other options.

Maybe “stunning” would be too strong, but the reality of Gonzalez getting released is unexpected. The Orioles are anything but deep in the rotation, and apparently Gonzalez’s former teammates are less than ecstatic. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, given Gonzalez’s presence, but it seems to me there are three ways to think about this. One of them, I prefer over the others.

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I’m an optimistic player evaluator, and I recognize that. I try to see the good in what players can do, so I liked the Orioles’ idea of signing Hyun-soo Kim out of Korea. Now, Kim has not had a good spring training to this point, so he hasn’t made the best first impression. He also probably hasn’t made his last impression, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to see this headline from Ken Rosenthal:

This is something the Orioles have done before. A headline on Orioles.com says the team dismissed the report, but this post from Eduardo A. Encina makes it sound like Kim is indeed on the outside looking in. The Orioles might at least try to send Kim to the minors. In part, that’s because Kim hasn’t looked good, and he was hitless through his first 23 at-bats. Kim has to know he hasn’t yet been impressive. But there’s another factor — a surprising one — and that factor goes by the name of Joey Rickard. Rickard came to camp just hoping to make the roster, but based on the circumstances, he might become an outfield starter.

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From last Friday’s chat:

10:30
Denji: I’m expecting the average Orioles game to be a 7-5 loss where they hit 3 solo home runs and strike out 15 times. Could they threaten both HR and K team records?

10:32
Jeff Sullivan: They’re not going to hit 264 home runs.

Twist!

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Some time ago, I wrote about both Mychal Givens and Tony Zych, two rookie relievers who remained mostly unknown despite breakthrough seasons. I’m a fan of Givens, and I’m a fan of Zych, but while researching those posts, I came across some other names of intrigue. Mostly, I just filed them away in my own brain, but I’ve frequently thought about a few of them. And now that I have a chance, I can’t not write about one of them. One of the players whose names I hung on to just changed organizations over the weekend, and I have to jump in here if only because I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t.

As people waited for the Pedro Alvarez acquisition to become official, any mystery would’ve probably had to do with whether he’d pass an Orioles physical. One could’ve wondered about something else, though: Who would be dropped from the Orioles’ roster to make room? Alvarez did pass that physical, and he’s going to be a full-time DH. The Orioles did have to clear space on the 40-man, and the corresponding move passed by almost unnoticed. After all, what’s most important is the Orioles have Alvarez. But the Orioles no longer have Andrew Triggs. Now the A’s have Andrew Triggs. Let me tell you a little about Andrew Triggs.

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Episode 639
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he examines Houston’s relative weakness at first base and designated hitter, the possible implications of Baltimore’s strikeout-heavy lineup following the acquisition of Pedro Alvarez, and a potential blindspot in the BaseRuns run and win estimator.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 33 min play time.)

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There are certain statistics that get tallied on scorecards such as hits, walks, runs, and strikeouts.  These aren’t the modern, comprehensive measures of performance we typically use here at FanGraphs, but they are the building blocks of those metrics. Without singles/doubles/triples/etc, there is no way to build wOBA or wRC+. Without strikeouts, walks, home runs, and innings pitched, there is no FIP.

While we’ve generally moved beyond caring about certain counting stats, we use them to build the things about which we care a great deal. But there is at least one standard scorecard event that doesn’t get a lot of attention when we build these metrics because it’s extremely rare and also extremely subjective: the balk.

The layman’s description of a balk is easy enough to understand: it’s a movement made by the pitcher intended to deceive the runner into thinking that same pitcher is about to throw towards home, when in reality he (the pitcher) is not. Any reasonably informed fan knows that the specifics of the balk rule are complicated and enforced at the whims of the umpire. It’s a judgment call, and one that doesn’t seem to be uniformly implemented at any given moment in time. But there are trends in balking:

This graph deserves two explanations. First, let’s discuss 1988. The balk rule was changed in 1988 and if you didn’t know the results of the change, the actual difference in the wording of the rule might not catch your eye. I’ll allow Theron Schultz of Recondite Baseball to explain:

Baseball Official Rule 8.01(b): The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body and (b) come to a complete stop.

1988 Baseball Official Rule 8.01(b): The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body, and (b) come to a single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.

The difference between the two rules is that the 1988 version replaced “complete stop” with “single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.” This slight change, intended to make balk calls more uniform throughout major league baseball, instead sparked one of most frustrating summers ever for major league hurlers. Only six weeks after opening day, Rick Mahler of the Atlanta Braves committed the 357th balk of the 1988 season, breaking the MLB record for most balks in a complete season… with three-quarters of the season to play. Before all was said and done, American League pitchers were called for a staggering 558 balks. Their National League brethren had it a little easier, “only” committing 366 balks.

This is a wonderful bit of trivia, but it obscures the broader trend: fewer balks are being called across the league. We have data back to 1974, and since that time, there has been a clear decline in the number of balks called in major-league baseball (shown in the graph as balks per 162 games). Here’s the same graph a before, now with a truncated y-axis for easier viewing:

It’s unclear if umpires are letting pitchers get away with more balking behavior or if pitchers are less guilty than they used to be, but the trend is rather clear. There was also a rule revision before 2013 outlawing the fake-to-third-throw-to-first move, which shaved about a balk per team season from the league.

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There’s a lot to like about spring training. Hey, it’s baseball! Sort of. Games end in ties, Will Ferrell gets to play all the positions. That’s fun. Also, there’s a lot not to be thrilled about during spring training. Games end in ties! And games don’t actually count.

Although, if you’re a fan of the Cubs, Pirates, and especially the Orioles, you’re probably happy about that last point so far this March. Those teams are a combined 3-23 in spring-training play. Fortunately, we’re just finishing the first full week of baseball games, just getting our first real look at starting rotations, and many teams (like Baltimore, with their 0-9 record) have been marching out many unrecognizable and/or split-squad rosters (which would at least partly explain the zero in the wins column). But what does spring training mean for the season ahead? Can we really glean anything from March performance, especially team-wide? It’s good to remind ourselves of what this means.

We’re mainly going to be looking at the very obvious: how do team win-loss records correlate between spring training and the regular season? Is there any sort of relationship between terrible March teams and terrible regular-season teams, or vice versa with good teams? Take a look at a plot of the spring training and regular season records of all teams between 2006-2015 — and feel free to mouse over the chart:

This chart is all over the place: lose more games than you win in spring training? Doesn’t mean you’re going to do so during the regular season. Win more than you lose? Doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. A month of games in March is the same as a month of games at any other point during the season — a relatively small sample, prone to all the pitfalls we see in any other small sample. If we tried to glean something from this 10-year sample, there are examples warning us not to be woefully awful in spring training. If a team covers that — finishing above .300 — our data provides evidence that the team probably won’t be unrecognizably terrible. Then again, we simply don’t see teams lose more than ~110 games very often during a regular season, whereas finishing with a winning percentage that low is doable in one month of baseball.

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The first thing to consider when we think about Hyun-soo Kim’s hitless, OBP-less first 23 at-bats is that it’s 23 at-bats, and it’s Spring Training. Not that everyone hasn’t been considering this all along, but it’s always worth a reminder. Jose Bautista had an 0-for-25 run last year, and those were in games that count, and that wasn’t his first time ever facing major league pitching. It happens. Sometimes, it even happens to the best of them.

Yet, it’s still fair to wonder on this a bit, because this is the first we’ve seen of Kim, meaning it’s all we’ve seen of Kim, and it’s not like dudes are running 0-fers over 23 at-bats all the time — it would’ve been the 12th-longest hitless streak of last year, and the third-longest streak of not having reached base. This was a notable stretch of futility, Spring Training notwithstanding. The past tense being used here, of course, because Kim has snapped the streak. He reached base for the first time this spring after being hit by pitch on Thursday, and later got his first hit — a bases-loaded, RBI single off a Yankees reliever named James Pazos.

Through 25 plate appearances, Kim’s spring slash line is now .042/.080/.042. The hit is the new story, but we can learn more about Kim through the 23 outs. Let’s see.

* * *

Kim observation No. 1: Not all of this is on video

This one actually serves as a double-observation, with the latter half being a reminder that really, none of this too much matters. Proof of that being, not all of it is even televised. It’s 2016. If something matters, you can sit on your couch in your underwear and watch it on television. You can watch plenty that assuredly doesn’t matter, too, so it says something about those events which are consciously not televised. The first few games of Baltimore’s Spring Training weren’t televised, and neither was a select game in the middle. The rest were, though, and I watched 13 of Kim’s 24 hitless plate appearances and took some notes.

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Yesterday, the Orioles agreed to terms with Pedro Alvarez, potentially bringing him in — though we’ve learned to not count our chickens with Baltimore signings — to add some additional left-handed power to their line-up. As August noted this morning, Alvarez is a weird fit for the Orioles, because the Orioles needed an outfielder, and Alvarez is a DH. Signing Alvarez forces Mark Trumbo to right field, where he’s terrible, the effect of weakening the team’s defense probably will cancel out most of the offensive gain Alvarez might bring at the plate, making this a non-upgrade, or at least an inconsequential one.

But there’s also another potential story with the Alvarez signing. Pedro Alvarez strikes out a lot. In that way, the Orioles are a natural fit for Alvarez, because the Orioles clearly don’t mind strikeouts. They have Chris Davis, after all, and they traded for Mark Trumbo, and most of their role players don’t make a lot of contact either. Last year, the Orioles ranked third in the majors in strikeout rate (22.2%), and with Alvarez and Trumbo now in the fold, that number is probably going up in 2016.

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ORIOLES DISCLAIMER: Signings are not official until announced by the team. Player must still pass physical, which is apparently very difficult.

Maybe I shouldn’t even be writing this. I’ve been burned once before. But I’m going to go ahead and submit to the gambler’s fallacy and say there’s no way another medical snafu happens in Baltimore this offseason. Not after the first two. Not this year!

Baltimore’s exploits in the free-agent market this year, at least with regard to bringing in new players, have been like the construction of the Swamp Castle. The Orioles nearly signed Dexter Fowler to fill their void in right field, but at the last second, that deal sank into the swamp. Then they were linked to Austin Jackson, but that idea burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the third one! The third one stayed up.

Baltimore’s third attempt at building a castle in a swamp is Pedro Alvarez, with whom the team reportedly agreed to terms last night. Those terms are one year and $5.75 million, with another million or two in possible incentive dollars. It’s probably a little more than we’d expect a platoon bat without a position who was non-tendered in December to receive in early March, but when the terms of a deal begin with “one year and…” the money is almost always inconsequential. Alvarez got what he got, and now the Orioles stand to benefit from whatever he can offer them.

But what can Alvarez offer the Orioles? Well, he can offer them oodles of power, of course. If one were to distribute the $5.75 million Alvarez will reportedly earn according to the importance of his tools, north of $5 million would probably be attributed to his power. The power is Alvarez’s entire game, and it comes from the left-hand side, which helps protect Baltimore’s righty-heavy lineup.

And, despite the non-tendering, and the having-to-wait-until March, and the one-year deal, Alvarez’s bat is as there as it’s ever been. You probably wouldn’t guess it based on the inactivity surrounding Alvarez’s market, but, just last year, he tied a career-high in wRC+. He’s striking out less than he used to, and while the uptick in ground balls could be a small cause for concern, last year’s power output was second only to his 2013 season. Alvarez hits. The reason he had no market was because he needs to throw his glove into a swamp, and there just weren’t many designated-hitter openings for him in the American League.

But there’s a catch. With free-agent signings on March 7, there’s almost always a catch. For one, Alvarez can’t hit lefties at all, and so someone like Nolan Reimold or Joey Rickard will still have to take over for Alvarez in most, if not all, of Baltimore’s games against left-handed starters. But more importantly, the catch is that, in a more ideal world, Baltimore’s March 7 signing is an outfielder. In a perfect world, Baltimore would have already acquired a third outfielder by March 7. But we know about Fowler, and we know about Jackson. Alex Rios and Marlon Byrd were still available, and a trade was always an option, and so even after the first two whiffs, the expectation was that Baltimore would add a competent right fielder. Pedro Alvarez is not a competent right fielder. Neither is Mark Trumbo, but he’s the default square peg for Baltimore’s round hole.

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